Strong Communities for a Strong Alberta

Alberta Coyote Is Alive And Well After Being Struck And Then Stuck In Car Grille

A coyote in Alberta had quite the experience last week after it was hit by a car and taken on a highway trip inside the vehicle’s grille.

Georgie Knox said on Facebook that she was driving to work from Airdrie, Alta. to Calgary when she saw the coyote run in front of her car.

“I heard a crunch and believed I ran over and killed it,” she wrote in a post over the weekend.

Knox said she only found out the animal was still “embedded” in her car when a construction worker at a traffic stop told her.

“When I got out to look, this poor little guy was looking up and blinking at me.”

Knox said she called officials at Alberta Fish and Wildlife, who sent out a team to help the trapped coyote. After it was checked for injuries, he was set free.

“Clearly Mother Nature has other plans for this special little guy!” Knox wrote.

Nature has many other plans for coyotes, apparently. The animals are “highly adaptable,” according to the province’s Environment and Parks department, and they can be found in all kinds of terrestrial habitats in Alberta.

The department says many landowners have long considered coyotes as pests and that they have survived repeated attempts at, uh, elimination.

Another coyote — no relation to the protagonist of our story — had a similar experience in Illinois in 2014.

The Chicago Tribune reported at the time that the animal, lovingly named Vern after the Buick Verano that hit it, was also taken on an involuntary and painful adventure inside a car’s grille.

Like Knox, the driver was oblivious to the coyote until a bystander alerted him.

“The coyote has been able to adapt to many of the changes brought about by man,” Alberta’s park department says on its website.